AIBU to feel sad about my son marrying young and changing surname?

[Cathryoi]

Hi all, so my DS is 23, 24 in August. He’s in the first year of his training contract on the path to becoming a qualified solicitor we are very proud of him.
He has been with his girlfriend who is 22, almost 23 since they were 15/16 (she was in Y11 and he Y12). They got engaged over a year ago and are getting married in the summer.

I feel so sad that they will be both so young while getting married, at just 23! I’m also quite sad that DS is giving up his name entirely in favour of her late mums maiden name (she’s also giving up her current surname).
They aren’t having a massive wedding or anything but I just imagined life a bit differently for them.

AIBU to feel sad they are getting married so young and sad that DS is giving up his name entirely?

For all those posters coming on and saying they met the love of their life at 15 and are still together that's great, I'm glad it has worked out for you.

I still think, however, that if you do settle down with your first teenage boyfriend/girlfriend there is more likelihood of one or both of you getting into your 40s/50s and wondering what if? Or possibly before that if you have kids & those years are tough.

Why? I don’t get why you would be more likely to think what if at that point if you have a happy marriage.

You can think that, but long term studies have shown that young couples in their first marriage are no more likely to divorce than older couples in their first marriage. The risk of divorce goes up with each successive marriage.

Because you haven't experienced a relationship with anyone else, your experience is limited to one person.
And you will both grow and change a lot over time and you may well grow apart.

But I have been on MN long enough to know that big age gap relationships are always perfect as are relationships that began when both participants were teenage.
It's part of MN folklore.

So you think it would be better to shag around, get to age 35/40/older and wish you’d stayed with your first partner?

A good relationship is worth it, regardless of when it starts.

This… dh and i have been together since uni, married at 24… my “bff”( or as I thought )was derogatory and awful, constantly saying are you sure?! Is this it for you? Even on our bloody wedding eve.. we’re now hurtling to 40.. she’s still single as no one has ever made the grade for her… she always wanted minor landed gentry/army officer/dr/lawyer… never happened

And? Still struggling to understand the reasoning. Why do you need to experience a relationship with another person if you hit the bullseye the first time?

I don’t need to sample a bottle of £5 wine first to appreciate a bottle of £200 wine. I know when something tastes good.

I always feel sad when someone gives up their name on marriage, male or female. I could never imagine giving up my name..other than that I don't see what there is to be sad about.

If you’ve never tasted any wine but one, then you can’t possibly have the slightest idea whether your one wine is a plonk for a fiver or a vintage Côtes du Rhône.

It’s the analogy to wine that falls a bit short.
Partners are not commodities to be consumed.

You can know when you have a life partner without going through a bunch of rubbish partners first.

Just like you can know your partner is abusive without having already been a victim of domestic abuse before.

You can know a good friend from a bully without having experienced either one before too.

But if you love the bottle you have, you never need to bother tasting any others. It doesn’t matter what it cost or what anyone else thinks of it.

If you get married young, you get to grow up together, forging a stronger relationship. If you wait, it’s a lot harder to meld two separate lives together.

Or two immature people make a bad choice because of inexperience, smother each other’s development and discover they’re very different people, really.

Shame if you taste the other wines and realise you preferred the first one…

If you wouldn’t settle down with the first person you’re with, that’s absolutely fine. But it works for some people. It’s weird to assume that grown adults with proper jobs aren’t able to know their own minds about these things.

Not every young person is immature. Not every immature person makes bad decisions. If two people genuinely love and like each other it can work. There are a lot of things I’d change about the decisions I made as a teen/young adult. Staying with my DH isn’t one of them.

Nothing stopping you going back to the first one if you find you prefer it, once you have some basis for comparison.

Yes, because they’ll just be hanging around waiting for you to make up your mind, won’t they? Assuming we are still talking about people not consumables.

I find it fascinating that so many people think 23 is so terribly young! They're adults, not teens.Perhaps not marrying stunts people's growth when they go about life thinking of themselves as 'too young' to marry and that's why we have such ridiculous influencers and reality tv shows. It's only in the recent past that 23 became 'young', so most of human history tells us that it's fine to get married then. Why wouldn't you want an adult to behave in a way that is fully adult?

I can’t believe people think 23 is a crazy age to get married, especially if they’ve been together since they were 16.

Yes I am curious when people think is the ‘right’ age to get married? Most people in my friendship circle met at uni then married between 26-28ish. OPs son will be 24 or about to turn 24 which isn’t that much younger really?

I wish I had met my husband that young! Didn't find him until I was 36!

Meeting at Uni is totally different to meeting as young teens at school.and then getting married at 23 having never had any other relationship.
Your experience is entirely different and you are missing the point.

But why do you wish you had met earlier? If you had met at 16 there is a good chance the relationship would end in your middle years.

There are so many posts on here with posters being shocked when their husband/wife they have been with since they were teenage has up and left them when they hit their 40s, 50s.
These sorts of posts are almost a daily occurrence.

And plenty of posters on here who are saying they met in their teens are still together "years later" haven't hit those milestones yet because "years later" when you met at 16 still isn't that old.

Surely the main point is that the age tou neet doesn't actually seem to make much difference and shouldn't be a reason to/not to marry. Many that meet young have long succesful, happy marriages, as will many who meet later. These two are happy that this is the right choice for them.

I had zero boyfriends at school and met my husband in halls of residence in my first term. Come to think of it, quite a few of our friends did the same and when we got married in our early twenties, about 4 of our friends all did too and they are also still together. We then had a big gap before the next round of friends started to get married.

But you are still that bit older and more mature even in the first year of Uni than you are at 15/16.

I still personally think marrying someone you meet at school isn't ideal but it's just my opinion & hopefully the OP's son and fiancee with be very happy together & will stay married for the rest of their lives.